


Fear of Bliss

by flecksofpoppy



Series: Poppy's Adventures in Night Ficcing [32]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flecksofpoppy/pseuds/flecksofpoppy
Summary: That all it takes?” Jean taunts Eren as he manages to get up finally, spitting a little blood onto the ground. “You fight dirty and lose?”“Everyone fights dirty.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiggeryumyum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiggeryumyum/gifts).



> Thank you to TiggerYumYum for the prompt: _eren/jean: one of them crosses a line in a fight. It takes BOTH of them off guard at how much it bothers them._

Hand to hand combat is a chore that no one really knows the point of, although Eren seems desperate to learn all of its secrets, as he does with most things.

To Jean, it’s pathetic—mastering a wooden dagger is much less useful than mastering the maneuvering gear—yet Eren seems fixated. He even goes so far as to try to learn from Annie, a stoic small soldier who even Jean knows to avoid. She’s not fucking around with her hand-to-hand, and Eren learns the hard way when he gets flipped.

*

During the most strenuous moments of training, Jean is sure he could kill Eren. When he’s hungry, almost literally starving out on a test in the wild terrain, he thinks that he could actually do it—kill his fellow soldier out of desperation, to stop him from talking.

He doesn’t, but he wonders about his own sanity during those times.

Then again, during the last months of training, Jean is sure that Eren is aiming to kill him.

Everyone’s on edge, the hysteria of coming so close to earning a beginning rank, and especially of where everyone will end up in the top ten and down. There are a few cadets who are obvious placeholders, but then there are the dark horses. Eren and Jean are both in the running—Eren, for his lack of skill but single-minded goal, and Jean, for his unpredictable personality—and they both know they’re potentially up against each other.

But Eren doesn’t kill him, even when they’re paired for hand-to-hand combat a week before graduation.

It’s dusty that day, hot and dry air choking everyone on the field. One of the laundry vats has broken, and the entire girls’ bunk is absent, ordered to do their own laundry in each other’s company in a nearby river.

“Do you think…” Franz hazards a glance over at his bunkmates, swallowing hard, “it’d be a bad idea to go over and tell Hannah—”

There’s a chorus of male voices at varying octaves that all resolutely answer: “Yes, it’s a bad idea.”

“Pervert,” someone spits irritably.

“I’m not!” Franz practically squeals, sitting up as straight as an arrow and looking around wildly for the source of the voice.

Everyone is cranky and hot, and after a few seconds, Franz just crumples and looks miserable.

That is, suddenly, until Shadis’s voice breaks through the summer haze, shouting that they’re to be out in full uniform in the burning sun for hand-to-hand combat training.

No one complains—it’s too close to graduation—and Jean is surprised to notice that he’s managed to strap on his ODM gear first, beating everyone else in the bunk.

However, there’s something bittersweet about the victory, as he watches the vast majority of other recruits fumble with their buckles. It’s not that they’re slow by any means; it’s just that he’s faster.

“Expert, huh?” comes a skeptical voice.

“Yeah, guess so,” Jean retorts to Eren with a cocky shift of his hips. “Faster than you.”

Eren glares, but doesn’t reply; he’s gotten better at not lashing out. Somehow, this makes Jean angrier; he craves the rise to meet his own swell of aggression.

Once they’re out on the field, armed with the fake blades, Jean is ready to fight—especially when he’s paired with Eren. On some level, he knows it’s intentional that they’ve been paired, that they’re being tested in many ways before the “official” version.

Fact is: he wants to have this be done, knock Eren into the dirt, and leave the field.

It doesn’t quite go that way.

He’s not expecting the sweep that knocks him off his feet, pitching him onto the ground and causing his wooden dagger to go flying, and then he just gasps, trying to find his own heartbeat as Eren stands over him.

“Get up.” The tone is lackluster, unimpressed, and Jean scowls up into the sun and Eren’s shadow. “You’re really going down in—”

Jean grabs Eren’s shin and pulls, feeling petty, and Eren falls, too.

Shadis doesn’t stop them as they wrestle around on the ground like idiots, pushing at each other without holding back, bordering on a legitimate fist fight until Jean manages to kick Eren off him through sheer will power.

Jean picks himself up quickly, falling into a fighting stance, fists out as he guards his face which has now been graced with a large bruise on his right cheek.

“That all it takes?” Jean taunts Eren as he manages to get up finally, spitting a little blood onto the ground. “You fight dirty and lose?”

“Everyone fights dirty.”

Jean blinks, triumphant grin fading, and Eren spits again.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jean feels something in his chest, beating too loudly for comfort.

“It means,” Eren hisses back, holding his hip which apparently Jean had kicked substantially enough to bruise, “you’re an underhanded prick, and even if you had to throw your best friend or your mother to the wolves in order to get ahead, you would.”

Jean can’t help his sharp inhalation, the abrupt, “Fuck off,” that comes out of his mouth. “You’re a delusional snake, and you’d do the same, with that underhanded fighting, like a thug.”

His tone must tip Eren off that a line was crossed, but Eren still stands strong, staring at him with those with those unsettling green eyes.

“My mother is dead,” Eren spits, and hesitates, before saying in a surprisingly half-hearted voice. “If she had someone like you for a son, maybe it wouldn’t matter, but I miss her.”

The words take Jean’s breath away, and he’s still stunned even when a voice cuts through the scene. “Break it up!” Shadis barks. “Kirschstein, 30 laps! Jaeger, fill my damn canteen. I’m empty!”

Jean turns, hesitating for a tense moment, until barreling into Eren with his fists raised; he’s not disappointed as Eren hits him back, one punch landing right on his jaw, and the other at his shoulder.

Somehow, they both graduate in the top ten; Eren refuses to acknowledge Jean much after that.

* 

It’s years later that Jean learns subsequent fights are really ricochet hugs: Eren’s weird attempt at the occasional embrace and their lives move along in a surreal fashion, full of discoveries and death alike.

Almost everyone that Jean is close to dies, or has someone close to them die, and the air and earth itself seem like they’re irreparably cracked.

They try to retake Wall Maria once; Mikasa comes back with a cracked rib, Armin isn’t conscious, Eren is still so swollen with rage that he can’t shake the Titan body for a good ten minutes.

It snows; Jean takes the three of them to his mother. He wants to tell her that he’s bagged the prettiest girl in the Corps—Mikasa Ackerman, heartthrob for all concerned—but once Mikasa is actually there, and their history is plainly evident, the desire drops.

Mikasa smiles shyly as she helps Jean’s mother wind holly over the hearth; Armin shows them a more complicated stitch for a scarf than either of them apparently knew.

Later, when Mikasa and Armin are asleep, curled together in the corner while apparently leaving room for Eren—a space in their huddle that’s visible, clearly reserved for a third person who has yet to arrive—Jean finally feels defensive.

When they end up in the street the next night, Jean pointedly ignores how adult Eren looks in his civilian clothes now.

“I’m a good son,” Jean growls at Eren as the other refugees and citizens of Trost are singing carols.

Eren puts his hand over his heart, staring at Jean, and salutes. “Yeah.”

* 

Eren stops saluting the day Jean is put in charge of another squad; he starts kissing instead.


End file.
